


Zero to Sixty

by icarus_chained



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: All or Nothing, Character Study, Choices, Families of Choice, Friendship, Gen, Relationship(s), Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-14
Updated: 2012-08-14
Packaged: 2017-11-12 04:23:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/486641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James "Rhodey" Rhodes, on Tony Stark, and what it takes to love the man.</p>
<p>Gen, friendship fic, dealing with IM1, IM2, Avengers, and the potential future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Zero to Sixty

It was hard to remember, sometimes, how small Tony could be.

You never saw it when he was moving. When he was talking. You couldn't. When he was active, Tony was ego, and speed, and a constant barrage of information, attitude, defiance, motion. Even standing perfectly still, just thinking, he wasn't small. He was power, and potential, explosions waiting to happen, no matter how damn quiet he seemed to be.

If you were measuring Tony by the size of the headaches he caused, the man had never been small in his _life_ , was what he was saying here.

But sometimes, every so often, despite his own best efforts ... Tony could be made small.

Rhodey'd seen it three times. More or less. He'd seen Tony like that. The closest to broken the man could get, and still come back. Still try. Rhodey'd seen that three times.

The first had been Afghanistan. Of _course_. Though, 'seen' hadn't been quite the right word. Tony, even then, even after that, hadn't let himself be _seen_ to be small. Throwing up a peace sign, while kneeling battered and burned in the sand. Refusing that wheelchair, damn well _walking_ off the goddamn plane, his chin up and oozing battered arrogance from every pore. Tony had done his damnedest, not to be small then.

But for a moment, when Rhodey had wrapped an arm around him. Kneeling in the sand, with Rhodey making stupid jokes to hide how desperately relieved he was to see the bastard alive. For that moment, while his face was hidden in Rhodey's chest, and his burned shoulders were slumped under Rhodey's arm, Tony had been ... small. So damned small. Letting himself slip, just for a moment. Just because it was safe.

It was odd, sometimes, comparing that memory to the press conference just afterwards. Rhodey'd caught clips of it, later. Strange and contradictory, in that way only Tony Stark could be. Watching Tony sit on the floor in front of the podium, sad and wistful and determined, with his cheeseburger forgotten in his hand. Tony should have been small then, too. He should have seemed so frail, sitting there.

Instead, he'd had the entire place sitting on the floor in front of him. He'd sat down, meandered around trying to say something, and every last person there had been hanging on his every word. Tony'd slapped his weakness up in front of all of them, made himself deliberately the smallest person in the room ... and somehow, doing that, turned around and made himself simultaneously the biggest.

One of these days, Rhodey was going to figure out how the son of a bitch _did_ that.

The second time ... the second time, there'd been none of that. None of the relief, the annoyance, the bewildered frustration. The second time he'd seen Tony broken ... there'd been nothing but heart-stopping terror, for the few seconds it lasted.

Because the second time, Rhodey'd thought it was Tony's body. The second time, Rhodey'd burst into Tony's Malibu home, burst down into the garage/workshop, and he'd seen ... A body, crumpled on the floor. Lying in shattered glass. Pepper's words had been ringing in his ears, that Stane had betrayed them, that Stane had tried to kill Tony, and he'd thought he was looking at a body. At Tony's corpse.

He hadn't been. It had been _damn close_ , fuck, Rhodey doesn't ever want to have to think how close it was, but he'd touched that shoulder, rolled Tony over, and suddenly the frail, crumpled corpse was a panicky, pissed-as-all-hell Tony Stark, sucking in a shuddering breath and letting it out on half a dozen orders and shit, Rhodes, we don't have time for you to be getting sentimental on me. Zero to sixty in two seconds flat. Tony fucking Stark.

He figured that was how you knew if you loved the man. If he could turn you from heart-stopping terror, desperate pity, to pissed the hell off in two seconds flat, and even still, even knowing, you'd be terrified all over again the next time you saw him damaged.

Even if, that next time, you were the one _dealing_ that damage.

Rhodey didn't let himself feel guilty. He'd done his apologising then, done it back to back in a fancy garden, surrounded by drone armours, after having almost killed each other. He'd offered his apologies then, and even gotten one in return, and he didn't let himself feel guilty beyond that. 

He hadn't _known_. If Tony'd thought to _tell_ someone, tell one damn person he was dying, that it was more than just him slipping inexorably into a perpetual drunken stupor, the one they'd thought he'd pulled himself out of after Afghanistan. If Tony'd just _trusted_ one of them. Him, or Pepper. Or fucking _anybody_. But Tony hadn't, and they hadn't known, and they'd done what they did because of that.

But sometimes, when the memory intruded, that armoured figure lying in the ruins of his living room, completely alone, all his guests fled in fear or disgust, and his best friend flying off with his armour, and nothing but disgusted contempt in their parting ...

He couldn't let himself feel guilty. Fuck. _Wouldn't_ feel guilty, refused to. But that ... Even in Afghanistan, even lying crumpled and mostly dead on his lab floor, Rhodey didn't think Tony had ever, _ever_ , been as small as he'd seemed then. Lying on that ruined floor, with nothing left to live for.

He'd come back. Somehow, by some means that Rhodey almost didn't want to know, Tony'd come back. He'd pulled himself together, goddamn made up an element in his basement, stuck it in his chest, and come out fighting. Come out to argue with Rhodey, warn him, almost get killed by him, apologise to him, get apologised to, and incidentally help stomp the bad guy. 

Zero to fucking sixty, all over again, because he was Tony fucking Stark, and he didn't _let_ himself be made small. Not for more than a moment. He would walk off that damned plane, and armour up out of that lab, and fucking stick a lightbulb in his chest to pull himself up off that ruined floor. Every fucking time.

Rhodey ... didn't know how to feel, sometimes, about that. About knowing that. 

He'd seen the man small. He'd seen the man broken. Fuck. He'd even done the breaking, or at least helped, that one time. 

And it wrenched at him. It twisted in his gut, a sick turn of fear and pity and fury and admiration. Frustration, that Tony kept ... that they were always _too late_. That the only times the man fucking let you see him small was when it was too fucking late to help him. When he'd already clawed himself out, or was so far gone that it would literally take a fucking miracle to save him. Then, and _only_ then, did he let you see.

It was why they were the worst. Those moments, those times. It was what made them _wrong_. Because it meant it was too late. That the damage was already done. That he was going to pull himself out, or he wasn't, but there wasn't a damn thing you could do either way.

It was that, more than anything, that made Rhodey _hate_ seeing him that way. And yet ...

It was so easy to forget, most of the time. That Tony was ever small, that he could ever be _made_ small. When you were calculating how big he was by the size of the headache he gave you, when you were grinding your teeth down from the sheer frustration he pulled behind him like a shadow everywhere he damn went. When you were looking at Tony Stark, the genius, the billionaire, the superhero, the _annoying son of a bitch_. 

When you hadn't seen Tony Stark, the ex-captive, the murder victim, the betrayed friend. When you hadn't seen him kneeling on that dune, lying on those floors. When you hadn't seen him stand back up, every fucking time. When you hadn't seen ... Tony Stark.

And if you hadn't, you couldn't love him. Not really. Not down to the bone, the worst and best he could be, the way he was when he was small, the way you only saw when he was broken, and standing the hell back up despite it. You couldn't love him, if you hadn't seen that.

And if you _had_ ... then, in some ways, you couldn't ever forgive him. Whether for not letting you see until it was too late, or for letting you see _at all_ , Rhodey wasn't sure. Changed his mind from day to day. But it was part of it. Part of loving Tony. The goddamn stupid son of a bitch. Once you'd seen, you couldn't ever unsee, and there were always going to be days when it was _so hard_ to forgive him for that.

Rhodey'd seen Tony small three times. Pepper, something similar, maybe a few more. JARVIS, probably more than any of them.

And Obadiah. Fucking Stane had seen it too. Those fucking bastards in the cave. That Russian son of a bitch who'd wanted to make him bleed. They'd seen him broken, because they'd been doing the breaking. They'd seen him broken, because they'd _wanted_ to.

The best and worst of the man, that only the best and worst of those around him ended up seeing. Zero to sixty, all or nothing, fucking _Tony Stark_.

He was the biggest goddamn headache Rhodey'd ever had. A giant, looming presence, that you spent half your time wanting to punch out, to shake until his teeth rattled and slap upside the head until he fucking let you see that he was human, and something more than a big ego attached to a bigger mouth.

And then he did, then you saw, and part of you couldn't ever forgive him, because it was one of the most terrifying things you'd ever seen. Because no-one should be that fucking small and that fucking big at the same time. No-one should be that weak, and that brave. No-one should be able to sit absently on the floor, and make a whole damn room sit down after him, just because.

And the only reason he could, the only reason Tony being that small mattered a damn in the first place, was because most of the time he _wasn't_. 

It was enough to make you hate the man. At the exact same time it was also enough to make you love him.

And what you did, when you found him broken, when you saw him small, was what showed which side of the line you came down on. The best, or the worst, of those around him.

Rhodey'd made his choice, staggered over those three times he'd witnessed it, those times he'd found himself wrapping an arm around burned shoulders, turning that body over, fighting past desperation and into surrender with that fatal stupor. Rhodey, like Pepper, like JARVIS, had made his choice. 

People like Obadiah, like Vanko, had made the opposite.

He wondered, now. Watching the news clips of Manhattan, listening to Tony banter casually with Banner, and talk with an odd, hopeful sort of annoyance about Romanov, Rogers, Barton, Thor. Listening to that, standing beside Pepper and trading wary, curious glances with her, he wondered.

What side ... were the Avengers going to come down on?


End file.
